Slow Cooker Freestyle Rabbit Curry

My farmer had just processed four rabbits when I arrived to pickup vegetables and eggs on Saturday morning, so I brought one home with me and created a freestyle rabbit curry in the slow cooker. I call it freestyle because I did not consult my earlier recipe for rabbit curry, but made up a new curry recipe off the top of my head that I liked even better. This one tasted lighter even though I used two cans of coconut milk instead of one. The flavors were more complex because I used a wide variety of spices, but did not go heavy with any particular one.

Many people tell you exactly how much spice to add by giving you measurements in teaspoons or tablespoons. Most of the time when I give measurements in teaspoons or tablespoons I am sharing a guess because I rarely measure the spices I add. My approach is to add a light, moderate, or heavy “dusting” of a spice depending upon how much of any particular spice I think would make the food taste good. That may be a little intimidating at first, but I think it is important to experiment with your cooking and to develop a feel for appropriate amounts of spice. When I first began cooking, I often ate overly spicy food because I frequently added a heavy dusting of the hot stuff when I should have added a light or moderate dusting. Now I find that I like most everything I cook every time because skill really does improve with practice.

Directions: Use a big, heavy knife or kitchen shears to cut the rabbit into three pieces – front legs, torso, back legs. Then cut down the center of the leg portions to separate the right and left sides. Arrange rabbit pieces in slow cooker. Add a moderate dusting of salt, garlic powder, and crushed red chili peppers. Add a light dusting of garam masala. Add about 10 whole cloves and 10 whole green cardamom pods. Add a heavy dusting of ground ginger, cinnamon, and yellow Jamaican curry. Add 2 cans of coconut milk to nearly submerge the rabbit pieces. Place cover on slow cooker. Set temperature to slow cook (200 degrees on my unit) and time to 6 hours. When done, transfer food to plates and enjoy!

Notes: I wilted a wok full of fresh greens in some coconut oil and layered them on my plate before adding rabbit curry on top. I like wilted greens and rabbit curry, but most any vegetable would make a good accompaniment to rabbit curry.

Rabbits have many small bones and my approach to cooking does not remove a single one. That means you have to be careful when eating to avoid swallowing or choking on any. Dealing with the bones is not a problem to me, but I might not serve rabbit curry to a small child.

After 4 hours of cooking, I threw a small batch of small, fresh carrots on top of the mix and let them cook with the rabbit for 2 hours. If you wanted to cook big carrots with the rabbit, you might want to add it after 3 hours and not 4 to allow plenty of time for them to cook through.

If your rabbit is frozen, you may want to allow 8 hours overall cooking time or thaw it first.

The cardamon and cloves are not pleasant to chew, so look for them and small bones when you are eating.

My slow cooker is a Cuisinart Multi Cooker that I picked up at Williams-Sonoma because my local store had one in stock and I wanted to start cooking right away. Amazon sells the Cuisinart, but seems to be out of stock frequently. The Breville Stainless-Steel 7-Quart Slow Cooker with EasySear Insert on display in my Store is similar. Check them out by clicking on the Store link in the upper right hand corner of this site. The Cuisinart has a see-through top and the Breville has a stainless steel top. I like being able to see inside without opening the lid, but the Breville sells for $75 less than the Cuisinart.

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Tom Denham

My sleep, mood, and athletic performance improved after just a few weeks of eating real, whole foods exclusively. My body fat dropped from 30 percent to 10 percent over the course of one year eating all I wanted of meat, fish, eggs, veggies, some fruit, and lots of healthy fats from coconut, avocados, and olives, but no grains, dairy, peas, beans, sugar, processed foods, or alcohol. This approach to eating is explained in It Starts With Food by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig. Every recipe on this site meets their "Whole30" criteria AND passes my taste tests. I hope you enjoy these meals as much as I have.